Have you ever been recommended a new show to watch, but with the caveat that ‘it gets good once it gets going’ or even for longer shows ‘once you get past the first season it gets great’. There’s lots of variations of this phrase, but ultimately they are all intended to mean the same thing; that there are certain shows that simply get better the further you are into them.
It always struck me as a little strange this form of recommendation. It’s essentially saying to you, the prospective viewer, that the show fails on first impressions. That you potentially will not enjoy the first couple of hours, or even days of viewing time, but eventually there will be a payoff, that the time you put into it will ultimately end being worth it. I’ve always found it to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whenever I have taken this advice, I end up watching something I don’t really enjoy, and by the time I’m at the point it’s supposed to start getting good, I’ve already put in so much time that I might as well finish it anyway.
I think this has largely come around due to binge-watching culture that predominantly started with streaming, but previously existed with DVD box-sets of various shows. Prior to this, there was really no such thing. Television shows on regular broadcast networks by definition have to grab the viewer with any opportunity they have, as they had to grab someone flicking through the channels attention straight away. Before the advent of event television, this usually meant that shows were designed in such a way that every episode was a self-contained story that people could pick up on halfway through. They didn’t need to watch it from the beginning to enjoy it, and in a way I miss that type of show.
A good example of this is the comedy series. If you look at the big hitters of previous decades, from British classics like Blackadder (1983, BBC), Mr Bean (1990, ITV), Fawlty Towers (1975, BBC), or American examples like Seinfeld (1989, NBC), Friends (1994, NBC) or even the American version of The Office (2005, NBC), you can easily jump into any episode and enjoy the show for what it is. Sure, you would get more enjoyment from watching the whole run, being able to understand the running gags and some connected storylines, but ultimately you could watch a random episode on a lunch break and still get the intended reaction from the show. Compare this to modern comedies like our previously reviewed Big Mood for instance, if you dropped into that show halfway through you’d simply have no idea what was happening and wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.
However following the advent of catch-up services and streaming, this whole dynamic no longer needed to exist. Instead, even if a show was on broadcast television, if they grabbed the viewer they knew that person could go back and catch up on previous episodes. They could create much better narrative throughlines and stories because they could feel that viewers would reliably watch the full series instead of just an episode or two. This has led to the virtual eradication of TV in which each episode can stand on its own. Of course there are a few genres which naturally still work like this, such as reality and panel shows, soaps, and crime serials. But of the simple comedy or drama, it really does not exist.
There are some interesting exceptions to this rule. On the American side, very long running shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005, FX), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000, HBO) or animated sitcoms like The Simpsons (1989, Fox) and Family Guy (1999, Fox) are still designed in such a way that every episode is self-contained, mainly because these shows existed prior to the streaming takeover and have mostly kept their structures intact.
On the British side, Ghosts (2019, BBC) generally felt more like fun little stage plays with each episode having it’s own story, perhaps in reference to the ghosts eternal lament. The Cleaner (2021, BBC) maintains a self-contained structure possibly because of its roots on German television as an homage to the chamber play, but quite a lot of our comedies now are set up specifically to be watched as a full story, back to back. The Good Place (2016, NBC), The Change (2023, Channel 4), Everyone Else Burns (2023, Channel 4), Man Like Mobeen (2017, BBC), Big Boys (2022, Channel 4), Avoidance (2022, BBC), are just a few examples of modern comedies from the past few years that have a strong narrative throughline.
I have to say though, I’m not really complaining. All of the shows I listed in the above paragraph, I really enjoyed. I love being able to get invested into a show, and with a comedy in particular if you love the characters, emotional scenes can have a lot more impact because the characters have given you so much joy by making you laugh that you end up caring for them in a way that’s harder to do with straight dramas. It just means though that you can’t really evaluate shows with one episode anymore, you just have to accept that to understand a show properly you have to watch the full thing.
And this hasn’t always paid off. There’s been countless shows recommended to me that have ultimately ended up being a waste of time. I don’t really want to get too negative in this article, but after not enjoying the first episode, I didn’t suddenly start enjoying it halfway through. I’ve always found with shows I’ve liked to be gripped straight away. For a more serious show like Severance (2022, Apple TV) my interest was peaked from the beginning. I’ve never really found it to be true that I’ve started to like a show the further I got into it that I didn’t to start with. All that’s happened to me is I’ve weighed whether or not I should just finish it to complete it.
I do wonder why we often feel that we must complete something for it to be worth it. Why do we feel it’s better to finish a show we aren’t enjoying, than just to stop watching it halfway through, to reclaim that precious time by doing something more productive or enjoyable. I’ve decided now that I won’t be doing that anymore. Delayed gratification is great if you’re a middle class saver putting some money into your ISA every month, but it’s not such a good thing for enjoying television.
So, if I ever get a recommendation for a show, I’ll always give it a shot by watching the first episode or two. If I’m not enjoying it, I’m just going to cut my losses and stop watching. Completing shows like they are a checklist is no longer my priority, I’ll reclaim that time back and actually enjoy myself. What a revelation.
Screen Waffle 